Counterfeit trash bags

Those are words I never thought anyone would have an opportunity to use together. What a country!

Yahoo News – Mass. city misspells ‘offcial’ to catch bag cheats

GLOUCESTER, Mass. – No, managers with Gloucester’s Public Works Department aren’t idiots. They’re just trying to catch cheats. When the Massachusetts city unveiled its new $2 purple trash bags that all residents must use when disposing of household waste, the word ‘official’ was deliberately spelled ‘offcial.’

Recycling coordinator Kathy Middleton tells The Gloucester Daily Times the intentional misspelling is supposed to make it easier to catch people who try to counterfeit bags. Middleton says counterfeiting has been a problem in the past.

I’m pretty sure I shouldn’t look this up and find out why Gloucester, Mass requires its subjects to use $2 trash bags. Or why they’re even worried about counterfeit trash bags. But I did. And now I know. That’s how they pay their trash collection fees.

I guess it’s a good thing every city doesn’t do this. Then Glad and Hefty would be getting in line for a government bail-out.

Hard-hitting news

Because it must be said:

Sarah Palin’s eyeglasses will not make you look as good as Sarah Palin.

Our analyst adds:

As long as people are going to call it a presidential beauty contest, why not get someone in there with some experience?

That concludes this special report.

And now, this, from Cincinnati WKRC. C, i said. C. Not P. C.

Does Editorial Talk to Marketing?

I’m thinking, “no”. These are the front and back covers of the new issue of Nature magazine.

The journal swears it is horrified by the coincidence.
“We didn’t know until the issue landed on our desks,” Nature pleaded to the media.
“It just goes to show that editorial and advertising aren’t working in cahoots.”

A-yep. (From the Daily Mail.)

Transgender toilets?

This, as so many Fark entries say, can’t end well. Transgendered students at Manchester University don’t feel comfortable or safe in either of the rest rooms at the student union.

So the women’s officer there has had this brainstorm: Change the signs. Instead of “women” and “men”, they now read “toilets” and “toilets with urinals”.

Well, that should solve the problem, don’t you think? I mean, so long as nobody actually has to change their attitudes, proper signage fixes everything.

(Story from the Manchester Evening News.)

Shoot! Shoot! That octopus is strangling that man

The further you read, the better this story gets.

Bagpipes provoked Olympic alarm
A bagpipe player sparked a security alert at the Olympics – after Chinese police mistook his musical instrument for “some kind of weapon”.

The Borders piper was in China to carry out a sponsored walk along the Great Wall to raise funds for the National Deaf Children’s Society.

Mr Aitken said: “I’m not all that good on the pipes [how can you tell?] so I thought I’d go off on my own and have a practice before I had to play in front of the people I was doing the walk with.

“I had a silly soldier’s hat on and my kilt and a few locals gathered round and seemed to be enjoying me playing, but just as I finished a police car pulled up with four officers.

“They weren’t happy and it emerged that it was heightened security all over China because of the opening ceremony.”

It took the intervention of a passer-by to explain to police what the bagpipes were.

“It was pure luck that a tourist guide was passing and stopped them from arresting me by explaining what bagpipes were – they thought the pipes were some kind of weapon,” said Mr Aitken. [BBC]

They sure aren’t a stealth kind of weapon.

You know what “perfect pitch” is to a bagpipe player? Being able to hit the middle of the lake.

Whatever happened to…

…that guy who was on Jeopardy! like 74 days in a row and won $2.52 million dollars? Huh?

Well, he wrote a book (duh), wrote another book (hm), co-invented a couple of trivia games and (like everyone else) has a blog. It was on that blog that he recently noted he’d stumbled upon the perfect summation of public radio in a single sentence. Go, read and be amazed.

I have a theory…

A story has been rolling around the media this week about a University of Colorado research study linking bumper stickers (and window signs and bobbleheads and other decorative gewgaws, collectively called “territory markers”) to dangerous driving behavior.

Drivers who put stickers on their cars, the study says, are more likely to drive aggressively, lose their temper, and/or succumb to “road rage”. The more stickers they put on their cars, the more likely they are to behave badly, and the worse they behave when they do lose it.

And it does not matter what the stickers actually say. Left or right, secular or religious, “honor student” or “I spayed my dog” all indicate that the drivers feel more possessive of the “personal space” surrounding their vehicles.

My own theory is that the more bumper stickers the driver puts on his car, the more likely the aggregate message will be politically liberal. Here in the city of Atlanta, of course, most voters are Democrats, therefore most bumper stickers are for liberal causes, so anecdotal evidence would seem to confirm the theory–

But it would be unwise to take that as anything resembling proof.

Still, when I see this car–

Well, I drive cautiously until he’s out of sight.

I dreamt of something bigger

No, your eyes do not deceive you. That is a six-foot-tall, anatomically correct sock monkey.

No trick photography was involved, and no actual sock monkeys were harmed in the production of this masterpiece.

See Verkstad, via Erin O’Brien.

How to fill time on the news

From WSJ.com’s Best of the Web:

• Many Hollywood Celebrities Rally Behind Obama (Reuters)
• Actors’ Strike Could Hurt Mass. Movie Biz (Boston Herald)
• PETA Slams Jessica Simpson for ‘Real Girls Eat Meat’ T-Shirt (FoxNews.com)
• Menus With Fancy Font Can Mean Fancy Prices: Study (Reuters)
• Locked Door Thwarts Robber (Mobile Press-Register)

Recently flagged as “Obvious” by readers of FARK.com

• Guests get fed up as hotels’ miscellaneous fees pile up (Freep.com)
• California summer starts with blast — of heat (msnbc.com)
• TV Batman Adam West not excited for The Dark Knight (Coventry Telegraph)
• Doctor: Flip-flops lack support (WTHR 13 Indianapolis)

I’ll take “The Flippin’ Obvious” for $100, Alex…

The consummate professional

What does it mean to be a professional actor?

It means that you give it everything you’ve got, even when you’re giving it to a felt-tip pen.

Can you imagine any other actor (that is, any other actor who didn’t really need the money) throwing himself into this with such gusto?

The gayness of Charles Nelson Reilly was perhaps the worst-kept secret in Hollywood. He was told it would keep him from getting work. Some weeks you could spin the dial and Reilly was on every channel at the same time. Thank God he was gay, or it would have been All Charles Nelson Reilly, All The Time.

(Saw the clip at Mark Evanier’s News From Me.)